Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor since 2001, has watched his city become one of world's coolest artistic meccas. But under his guidance, the city has devolved into a backward-looking architectural wasteland in which urban planning only favors the rich.

In an era when other cities have been zapping themselves awake with shock architecture, Berlin has been dreaming of rebuilding the old Baroque city palace and embracing a retro architecture vaguely evocative of the imperial era under the Kaiser. This anti-modern, indifferent view of aesthetics has ruled the day. Nevertheless, the city has become a mecca for several generations of artists, nightlife revelers and optimists from around the world.

Indeed, it's a paradox: Berlin, which is internationally recognized as one of the hottest cities of the 21st century, remains intellectually and architecturally waist-deep in the 19th century.

This contradiction has given rise to a new era that is the direct result of Wowereit's policies during his nearly 12 years at the helm of the city -- an era that has been dominated by key questions about the future of the city, yet without any concrete answers from the mayor's office.

Jim Kazanjian has been making insanely realistic-looking but obviously fake photo-collages for a while.We first checked in with Kazanjian's monsters when they were dystopian Victorian mash-ups set to post-apocalyptic landscapes. Now, the Portland, Ore.-based artist — he works in commercial CGI by day — has moved onto something a bit more sinister.

URBAN TALES will showcase three distinct architectural artwork series exploring visions of narrative based city redevelopments. Featuring RIBA Presidents Medal-winning work, these original and engaging threads of imagery from UCL architecture graduates Ned Scott, Nick Elias and Anja Kempa objectify fiction and challenge political reality. The exhibitors question the role of architecture in a changing world and use fictional narratives to design fantastical, but possible, cities. URBAN TALES will kick off with an opening party on Friday, March 6 and remain on view through April 10, 2015 at Carousel London

In celebration of the 100th Bauhaus anniversary, the Foundation Bauhaus Dessau has announced plans to construct a new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau. As part of a competition “preannouncement” published on the museum’s site, an open two-phased international competition will challenge architects to design a museum for the foundation’s “outstanding collection” under the “best possible conservation conditions.”

Co-promoter of the competition, the City of Dessau-Roßlau is currently searching for possible sites that will allow the Bauhaus Museum Dessau to be integrated into the city’s central City Park. It is hoped that the museum and park will “strengthen and complement each other and enrich the location as a cultural centre.

The Architects’ Journal recently published an enigmatic set of renderings, displaying what architect Richard Weston describes as a new genre of high-rise building: the "contextual tower."

The angular skyscraper — officially named after its address, 1 Undershaft — is intended to correlate closely with its surroundings, its form dictated by a careful analysis of adjacent masses to create a structure that combines maximum leasable floor space with the lowest possible visual impact. As low an impact as you can achieve with a 250-meter high building, at least…

Despite his status, Le Corbusier never had the opportunity to build in New York – in fact he only had one chance to build in the United States at all, completing Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge in 1963. But this doesn’t mean his influence isn’t visible all over the Big Apple. Originally published on 6sqft as “Towers in the Park: Le Corbusier’s Influence in NYC,” this article takes a look at three examples where Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City” ideals were transplanted to New York.

Even before taking his first trip to New York in 1935, Le Corbusier described the city as “utterly devoid of harmony.” After seeing it in person, his feelings didn’t soften. He wasn’t impressed by the tall towers, rather stating that they were the product of an inferiority complex, and he thought the city’s leaders were too timid to hire him. He wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times saying that “American skyscrapers have not attained the rank of architecture; rather, they are merely small objects such as statuettes or knick-knacks, magnified to titanic proportions.” He thought the city would benefit from buildings that “don’t try to outdo each other but are all identical.”

In 2011, Foster + Partner’s Spaceport America opened in the New Mexican desert with some wild fanfare: Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson propelled down the side of the building, champagne in hand, rockets soaring in the air, to christen the $220-million launchpad of the world’s first civilian spaceflight. Four years down the line and nary a space launch to speak of, the New Mexican local government is starting to question the facility’s worth. Last Thursday, lawmakers voted to advance a bill to sell it off completely, the Associated Press reports.

Zaha Hadid discusses the influence of Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich on her own design work. In Hadid’s early work, such as The Peak Blue Slabs (1982/83), the visual connections to Malevich’s strict, regular shapes and lines are evident.

Given the physical nature of the built environment, it would be easy to assume that the visual qualities of spaces dominate our our perception of a building. However, many artists and architects have experimented with specific sensory devices over the years, proving that every sense can be significant in transforming the experiential qualities of architecture. Here are five spaces designed to heighten your awareness in very unexpected ways: step inside and leave your preconceptions at the door…

After being freshly appointed with the Golden Lion award at last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, South Korea has become one of the architecture scenes to keep an eye on. The politically ambitious project Crow’s Eye View, presented at the Korean Pavilion in Venice, aimed to ”demonstrate the potential of an unified Korea by bringing together and interrogating the architecture of both cultures.”

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